BIND 9.10.0rc2 is now available

Introduction
BIND 9.10.0rc2 is the second release candidate of BIND 9.10.0,
a new branch of BIND 9.
This document summarizes features added or significantly changed
since the previous major release. Bug fixes since the most recent
development release (BIND 9.10.0rc1) are also summarized.
Please see the CHANGES file in the source code release for a
complete list of all changes.
Download
The latest versions of BIND 9 software can always be found on
our web site at http://www.isc.org/downloads/. There you will
find additional information about each release, source code, and
pre-compiled versions for Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Support
Professional support is provided by Internet Systems Consortium,
Inc., doing business as DNSco. Information about paid support
options is available at http://www.dns-co.com/solutions/. Free
support is provided by our user community via a mailing list.
Information on all public email lists is available at
https://www.isc.org/community/mailing-list/.
Special Note
After the release of BIND 9.10.0rc1, the BIND 9 development team
was informed of a namespace collision with another open-source
software product: the Xapian search engine already includes a
tool called "delve". Accordingly, we have altered the spelling
of our "domain entity lookup and validation" tool, first introduced
in 9.10.0b2, to "delv". Apologies to the Xapian project for the
oversight, and to any early adopters of delv that may have been
inconvenienced by the change.
New Features
DNS Response-rate limiting (DNS RRL), which blunts the impact
of reflection and amplification attacks, is always compiled in
and no longer requires a compile-time option to enable it.
An experimental "Source Identity Token" (SIT) EDNS option is now
available. Similar to DNS Cookies (as invented by Donald Eastlake
III and described in draft-eastlake-dnsext-cookies-04), these
are designed to enable clients to detect off-path spoofed
responses, and to enable servers to detect spoofed-source queries.
Servers can be configured to send smaller responses to clients
that have not identified themselves using a SIT option, reducing
the effectiveness of amplification attacks. RRL processing has
also been updated: clients proven to be legitimate via SIT are
not subject to rate limiting. Use "configure --enable-sit" to
enable this feature in BIND 9. [RT #35389]
A new zone file format, "map", stores zone data in a format that
can be mapped directly into memory, allowing significantly faster
zone loading. [RT #25419]
"delv" (domain entity lookup and validation) is a new tool with
dig-like semantics for looking up DNS data and performing internal
DNSSEC validation. This allows easy validation in environments
where the resolver may not be trustworthy, and assists with
troubleshooting of DNSSEC problems. (NOTE: The spelling of this
utility has been changed due to a namespace conflict; see the
Special Note, above.) [RT #32406]
The new "prefetch" option can improve recursive resolver
performance: when it is in use, cache records that are still
being requested by clients will automatically be refreshed from
the authoritative server before they expire, reducing or eliminating
the time window in which no answer is available in the cache.
[RT #35041]
Improved EDNS processing allows better resolver performance and
reliability over slow or lossy connections. [RT #30655]
Substantial improvements have been made in response-policy zone
(RPZ) performance. Up to 32 response-policy zones can now be
configured. Performance loss due to adding additional RPZs is
minimal.
RPZ now allows response policies to be configured based on the
IP address of the client.
ACLs can now be specified based on geographic location using the
MaxMind GeoIP databases. Use "configure --with-geoip" to enable
this feature in BIND 9. Thanks to Ken Brownfield for the
contribution. [RT #30681]
The version 3 XML schema for the statistics channel, including
new statistics and a flattened XML tree for faster parsing, is
no longer optional. The version 2 XML schema is now deprecated.
[RT #30023]
Improvements have been made to the XSL stylesheet used for XML
statistics: The stylesheet can now be cached by the browser;
section headers are omitted when the sections have no data to
display; counter readability has been improved. Also, broken-out
subgroups of XML statistics (server, zones, net, tasks, mem, and
status) can now be requested. Thanks to Timothe Litt for the
assistance. [RT #35115] [RT #35117]
The statistics channel can now provide data in JSON format as
well as XML.
Per-zone stats counters have been added to track TCP and UDP
queries. [RT #35375]
Server-wide stats counters have been added to track EDNS options
received. [RT #35447]
The new "in-view" zone option allows zone data to be shared
between views, so that multiple views can serve the same zones
authoritatively without storing multiple copies in memory. [RT #32968]
A new compile-time option, "configure --enable-native-pkcs11",
allows the BIND 9 cryptography functions to use the PKCS#11 API
natively, so that BIND can drive a cryptographic hardware service
module (HSM) directly instead of using a modified OpenSSL as an
intermediary. (Note: This feature requires an HSM to have a
full implementation of the PKCS#11 API; many current HSMs only
have partial implementations. The new "pkcs11-tokens" command
can be used to check API completeness. Native PKCS#11 is known
to work with the Thales nShield HSM and with SoftHSM version 2
from the Open DNSSEC project.) [RT #29031]
The new "named-rrchecker" tool can be used to check the syntax
of individual resource records, and optionally to convert them
to the format used for unknown record types: this allows
provisioning systems to deploy data using new record types without
needing to upgrade front-line name servers. [RT #34778]
The new "dnssec-importkey" tool allows "offline" DNSSEC keys
(i.e., keys whose private data is not stored on the system on
which named is running) to be published or deleted on schedule
using automatic DNSKEY management. [RT #34698]
When re-signing a zone, the new "dnssec-signzone -Q" option drops
signatures from keys that are still published but are no longer
active. Thanks to Pierre Beyssac for the contribution. [RT #34990]
New options have been added to "dnssec-coverage": -z and -k
indicate whether to limit coverage checks to ZSK's or KSK's, and
-l limits coverage checking to a specified duration. Thanks to
Peter Palfrader for the contribution. [RT #35168]
"named-checkconf -px" will print the contents of configuration
files with the shared secrets obscured, making it easier to share
configuration (e.g. when submitting a bug report) without revealing
private information. [RT #34465]
"named" now preserves the capitalization of names when responding
to queries: for instance, a query for "example.com" may be
answered with "example.COM" if the name was configured that way
in the zone file. Some clients have a bug causing them to depend
on the older behavior, in which the case of the answer always
matched the case of the query, rather than the case of the name
configured in the DNS. Such clients can now be specified in the
new "no-case-compress" ACL; this will restore the older behavior
of "named" for those clients only. [RT #35300]
On operating systems that support routing sockets, including Mac
OSX, *BSD and Linux, network interfaces are re-scanned automatically
whenever they change. Use "automatic-interface-scan no;" to
disable this feature. [RT #23027]
Added "rndc scan" to trigger an interface scan manually. [RT #23027]
A new compile-time option, "configure --with-tuning=large", tunes
various compiled-in constants and default settings to values
suited to large servers with abundant memory. This can improve
performance on such servers, but will consume more memory and
may degrade performance on smaller systems. [RT #29538]
The new "max-zone-ttl" option enforces maximum TTLs for zones.
If loading a zone containing a higher TTL, the load fails. DDNS
updates with higher TTLs are accepted but the TTL is truncated.
(Note: Currently supported for master zones only; inline-signing
slaves will be added.) [RT #38405]
Added a new "dig +subnet" option to send an EDNS CLIENT-SUBNET
option (as described in draft-vandergaast-edns-client-subnet-02)
containing the specified address/prefix when querying. Thanks
to Wilmer van der Gaast for the contribution. [RT #35415]
Partially implemented the EDNS EXPIRE option (as described in
draft-andrews-dnsext-expire-00). "dig +expire" sends an EXPIRE
option when querying. When this option is sent with an SOA query
to a slave zone running on a server that supports the option,
the response will report the time until the slave zone expires.
EXPIRE uses an experimental option code (65002), which is subject
to change when a permanent code is assigned by IANA. [RT #35416]
Multiple DLZ databases can now be configured, and are searched
in order to find one that can answer an incoming query. Individual
zones can now be configured to be served from a specific DLZ
database. DLZ databases can serve zones of type "master" and
"redirect".
"named-checkzone" and "named-compilezone" can now read journal
files, allowing them to process dynamic zones without the zones
needing to be frozen first.
The "rndc" command now supports new key algorithms in addition
to HMAC-MD5, including HMAC-SHA1, -SHA224, -SHA256, -SHA384, and
-SHA512. The -A option to rndc-confgen can be used to select
the algorithm for the generated key. (The default is still
HMAC-MD5; this may change in a future release.) [RT #20363]
"tsig-keygen" is now available as an alternate command name to
use for "ddns-confgen -q"; it randomly generates a TSIG key
suitable for use in named.conf. [RT #35503]
Specifying the keyword "auto" instead of a salt when using "rndc
signing -nsec3param" will cause "named" to select a 64-bit salt
at random. [RT #35322]
The internal and export versions of the BIND libraries (libisc,
libdns, etc) have been unified so that external library clients
can use the same libraries as BIND itself. [RT #33131]
Added a "Configure" script for Windows to simplify enabling or
disabling optional features. All versions of Visual Studio up
to 2013 are now supported, and support has been added for 64-bit
builds. Zip files containing pre-compiled 64-bit versions of
BIND 9 are now included with releases. [RT #34160]
"rndc -q" causes "rndc" to suppress output other than error
messages. [RT #21393]
"rndc zonestatus" reports information about a specified zone.
[RT #21671]
A new "rndc delzone -clean" option removes zone files when a
zone is deleted. [RT #33570]
"named" now listens on IPv6 as well as IPv4 interfaces by default.
Feature Changes
Threads are now enabled by default on most operating systems,
including Linux. Operators who were not previously using threads
may see some changes in behavior: Linux's thread model requires
named to drop "root" privileges earlier in the startup process;
as a result, some files and directories may not be accessible
to named depending on user ID and file permissions. This can be
addressed by using the "-u" command line option for force named
to run under the specified user ID. [RT #25483]
The default setting for the -U option (setting the number of UDP
listeners per interface) has been adjusted to improve performance.
[RT #35417]
Adaptive mutex locks are now used on systems which support them;
this has been found to improve performance under load on many
systems. Use "configure --with-locktype=standard" to use
conventional mutex locks instead. [RT #32576]
"rndc flushtree" now flushes matching records from the address
database and bad cache as well as the DNS cache. (Previously
only the DNS cache was flushed.) [RT #33970]
Updated zkt and nslint in the contrib directory to the newest
versions: zkt 1.1.2 and nslint-3.0a2.
The isc_bitstring API is no longer used and has been removed
from the libisc library. [RT #35284]
The word "never" can now be used as a synonym for "none" when
configuring key event dates in the dnssec tools. [RT #35277]
Documentation of native PKCS#11 has been expanded, specifically
to describe the new pkcs11: URI format used in key labels. [RT #35287]
The Windows installer now places files in the Program Files area
rather than system services. [RT #35361]
The timestamps included in RRSIG records can now be read as
integers indicating the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch,
in addition to being read as formatted dates in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
format. [RT #35185]
Several features previously unavailable on Windows are now
available, including "delve" and the "export library" APIs
including libirs. The Python tools "dnssec-coverage" and
"dnssec-checkds" can now be enabled on Windows via "Configure",
but are not included in the installation zips. [RT #35441]
[RT #35382] [RT #34355]
The irs_resconf_load() function, used for reading /etc/resolv.conf,
now returns ISC_R_FILENOTFOUND when the file is missing or
unreadable. However, it will still initialize an irs_resconf
structure as if the file had been configured with nameservers
at the IPv4 and IPv6 localhost addresses. Existing code that
uses irs_resconf_load() will need to be updated to treat
ISC_R_FILENOTFOUND as a qualified success, or it may leak memory
due to treating the result as a failure even though an irs_resconf
structure was allocated; see CHANGES for sample C code that
implements the correct behavior [RT #35194]
A comment is now included in .nzf files (which are used for
adding new zones via "rndc") to give the name of the associated
view. [RT #34765]
When using "request-nsid", if the name server identifier received
from the server contains printable characters, they will be
logged in a human-readable string format in addition to hexadecimal.
[RT #20864]
"named" will now log a warning when addresses of the wrong family
are used in "listen-on" or "listen-on-v6". Previously these were
silently ignored. [RT #17848]
The -S and -i options to "dnssec-keygen" and "dnssec-settime"
(to set up a successor key and set the prepublication interval)
were inadvertently left out of "dnssec-keyfromlabel". This has
been corrected. [RT #35394]
When the cache is dumped via "rndc dumpdb", DNSKEY records' key
ID's are included in the output. [RT #34533]
The XSL stylesheet used for the XML stats channel now displays
links to the various URLs showing broken-out subgroups of
statistics. [RT #35605]
Bug Fixes Since 9.10.0b1
Some name servers respond incorrectly when encountering unknown
EDNS(0) options; this can cause problems when using SIT. "named"
will now check for this by resending queries without SIT when
encountering unexpected response codes. [RT #35766]
A signed/unsigned mismatch in dns_name_fromtext() could cause
incorrect results when using lowercase. [RT #35743]
Thank You
Thank you to everyone who assisted us in making this release
possible. If you would like to contribute to ISC to assist us
in continuing to make quality open source software, please visit
our donations page at http://www.isc.org/donate/.
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